The road wound its way through the foothills of the Wilder Mountains. The small mountain range rose up out of the earth on the eastern bank of the Leif Greyn River. While the roadside along the riverbank was packed with building after building, the lush, green hillsides were dotted with larger stone structures. Long dry-stone walls, snaked over the dips and rises of the rolling landscape, penning large herds of cattle or sheep. Some of the larger buildings were crenellated, and had squat, round towers built up alongside of them. “Strongholds,” Shaella had called them.
Gerard was amazed by all of this. Berda’s stories had told of cities and towns, but Gerard had only been able to imagine a larger version of his village, with huts and shacks, instead of underground burrows. The idea of three and four level structures, built of carefully fitted together pieces of rock, was astounding.
About midday, when they had come upon the first real towered stronghold, Gerard thought he was seeing a castle. He hadn’t seen the formidable stronghold at High Crossing because they had crossed the bridge at night. If he had, then the one they had looked at that afternoon might not have seemed so massive.
From there, the streets had grown more crowded, with both people and structures. It became hard to see the surrounding lay of the land. The smell of refuse, and the press of the populace, had been overwhelming. That evening, when they came to the center of Castlemont and stood in the city’s wide open square, Shaella pointed up and to the east, and showed Gerard what a real castle looked like.
Wildermont was easily the richest kingdom in the east. The small mountain range was full of iron and copper deposits. Nearly all raw iron ore, and the majority of worked metal products in the entire realm, came from here. Brackets, axles, fittings for wagon building; banded hinges, frames and latches for construction; swords, steel spear and arrow tips, and armor all came from Wildermont. It was no wonder the ancient kings had built into the side of the mountains a monstrous palace-like structure that dwarfed any other kingdom seat in the realm.
Half the mountain was bricked, blocked, tiled and arched, all in the same pale gray stone. Half a hundred towers reached into the heavens, while in their shadows, twice as many more tried to do the same. A dozen wide crenellated walls, with wagons, and groups of people scurrying along the tops of them, snaked across the mountainside. Here and there, huge wooden gates were set in the sides of them. The tiny colorful specks of a thousand different banners flickered in the breeze. All of this seemed to glow dully in the evening as the sun slowly set.
As darkness slipped over the world, Gerard’s amazement grew a hundredfold. Thousands of window-arches and doorways began to glow golden, as torches and lamps were lit all over the palace. Large barrel fires blazed forth from along the tops of the walls and bridges, making them all look like elevated roads that floated in the air. It was a sight to behold.
They had gotten an inn again that night, but Shaella hadn’t come to him. She had other business, she had told him. He didn’t complain. He drank a mug of dark ale, in the common room with Greyber, while a bard sang a ballad about a pirate who had his entire ship snatched from the sea by an angry blue dragon. The pirate’s lover was so stricken by the loss that she rowed a skiff out to sea, and was never seen again.
Later, Gerard went back to his room and fell fast asleep. His dreams were full of the wonders that the rest of the world might hold for him to see. Only a small portion of his dreams concentrated on the fact that soon, he was going to be very close to a dragon himself.
The next morning, they rode further south. The familiar Leif Greyn River found the road again and flowed along beside it. Here, the river was so wide that he could barely make out the opposite shore line. Westland was over there. The roadway was wider here too. Carts and horse-drawn wagons came and went, three abreast. They passed, but didn’t cross, the incredibly huge bridge that led over into the Westland City of Locar.
“Locar Crossing,” Shaella called it. She paused, and studied the impossible span for quite some time.
The bridge was colossal: four wagon lanes and a pedestrian lane. Gerard watched, as a barge slipped under one of the seven arches that the viaduct made on its way across the river. The center arch was bigger than the others. At its top, the bridge seemed to be impossibly thin, yet it held fast as three fully loaded wagons, five horses, and a large huddle of squealing pigs went across it at the same time.
While Shaella studied something that was further across the bridge, Gerard studied the diverse types of fashion he saw people wearing. Here was a pair of men in red robes, and over there, was a peasant in rags. A lady, in a fine yellow dress on horseback, being led by a fully armored knight, had the crowds parting before them, as if they had the plague. A man in baggy silk pants the color of emeralds hurried past, a long, shining cape wavering after him. The variances were endless. But almost everywhere he looked, there was at least one uniformed man sporting a red wolf’s-head patch.
After finally leaving the crowds of Castlemont behind them, they came to yet another river bridge. This one was called Low Crossing. It spanned a small river that came out of the Wilder Mountains, just before it joined the main flow of the Leif Greyn. The town there, also called Low Crossing, was full of warehouses, and seedy looking men who wore the garb of river men.
They didn’t cross this bridge. While Shaella secured them a room for the night, Cole and Flick spoke with some workmen near a dock, where several barges full of wooden crates were moored. Gerard saw Cole pass a pouch to one of them, but didn’t concern himself with the matter. Shaella was returning, and he could tell by the look on her face, that she was going to spend this night with him. They didn’t make love, but instead, stayed up late kissing, laughing, and talking of the sights and wonders that had amazed Gerard. Eventually, they fell asleep in each other’s arms.
When they had left there this morning, they did so by boat. The horses had been left behind. This fact concerned Gerard as much as getting onto the boat did. He had never been on a boat before. Shaella explained that their destination was deep in the southern marshes, and horses couldn’t travel there without sinking.
“We’re leaving the world of men behind,” she said, leaving him to wonder what other sort of worlds there might be.
It didn’t occur to him that there would be terrible dangers on this portion of the journey, at least not until he was brought out of his pleasant recollection by the sound of steel being drawn directly behind him on the river boat deck.
The huge Seawardsman, Greyber, swung his big sword in a wide sweeping arc slicing the abdomen of one of the deckhands open, and gashing into the thigh of another. Terror jolted through Gerard’s blood like ice. What was happening? Why? His eyes searched for Shaella, but he couldn’t see her anywhere. Not on the fore deck. Not down either side of the railed walkway that ran past the sides of the box-like pilothouse, sitting in the middle of the boat’s flat-topped deck. He didn’t see her inside the pilot-house either. He did see the boat captain’s head suddenly twist to an impossible angle, before he slumped out of view. Where was she? What was happening?
There! He saw her! A brief glimpse when the pilot-house door had swung open as Cole left it. She was on the rear deck. He started to go there, with this heart hammering in his chest, but his way was suddenly blocked.
From around the walkway, to the right, men were approaching. Greyber stepped in front of Gerard protectively, and took up a readied stance. Gerard was forced back into the triangular area formed by the side rails coming together in a point, and Greyber’s rippling tattoo covered back. From where he was, he could see Flick standing on top of the pilothouse. The black-robed mage was chanting and pointing a finger down at something on the rear deck. Gerard thought he saw tiny streaks of crimson light shooting forth from Flick’s fingers, but he wasn’t sure. The man’s back was to him, and the sun was bright. It could have been glinting reflections, but he was fairly certain that it had been some sort of magic.
One of the men in front of Greybe
r lashed out with a long dagger, forcing the big man to jump back. Gerard was pinned into the bow rails, and had to lean out over the water to see around his protector. Another man had appeared, making it three. This one held a crossbow, trained in their direction, but he was behind the others, so he couldn’t fire it yet. He was jostling to get past his mate at the corner of the pilot-house so that he might get a clear shot at Greyber.
What happened next was more instinct than decision. Had he thought about it, he might’ve curled up into a fetal ball. Instead, Gerard dropped down to his hands and knees, and crawled forward between Greyber’s legs. He felt them tense as the big man swung his sword. Gerard didn’t rise up immediately, for fear of the blade. When he was sure he was clear, he rolled to the right, and screamed into his mind for the crossbowman to fire into his fellow’s back.
Instantly, the rush of the ring’s magic filled his body. His senses grew sharper, and the fear was forced completely out of him. He rolled to his feet in front of the two men, just as the crossbow bolt flew. The face before him contorted in shock and pain, as the steel-tipped bolt tore into him from behind. He started to fall to the ground, and Gerard wasted no time making his move. He reared back, and swung his fist as hard as he could into the face of the bewildered man, who had just shot his friend. The man stumbled backwards, down the walkway, and fell in a tangle of limbs. Before he could recover, Gerard began to savagely kick him. Within moments, the man was a bloody, unconscious heap.
Leaping over the man’s limp body, Gerard charged to the rear of the boat. Shaella’s sword was glowing pale yellow, where it wasn’t streaked with blood. At her feet, Trent and three of the deckhands, lay dead or dying, and before her, a huge burly man seethed with anger, while clutching a severe gash in his side. A few hundred yards behind them, shouts erupted from the deck of a flat barge that was heavily loaded with crates.
“Go!” Shaella commanded.
Gerard looked up at where Flick was standing over them on the top of the pilot-house. The bald man’s image shimmered and sizzled into a misty, blue color. Then, to Gerard’s open mouthed amazement, Flick disappeared altogether. Cole stepped out of the pilot-house then. He glanced approvingly at Gerard, and then strode towards the back of the boat, fading into nothingness as he went.
“Look!” Shaella ordered the man before her. She pointed her blade tip towards the barge behind them. She looked fierce and beautiful. Her face was mottled red with rage and exertion, causing the tear-like scar on her cheek to stand out in its paleness. She’s a force to be reckoned with, Gerard thought proudly. She’s a natural born leader, with a wicked magical blade glowing in her hand, and I’m her lover. It was all he could do to pull his eyes away from her, to look at what she was pointing out to her wounded captive.
On the barge, Flick and Cole were stalking across the tops of the crates, blasting anything that moved with hot, crimson bolts of magical energy.
“Do as I say or you’ll die,” Shaella told the terrified man.
With a grim nod, he conceded defeat.
“As you wish,” he said, as he limped into the pilot-house.
Shaella flashed Gerard a triumphant grin as she followed the man. She was enjoying herself, he saw, and he found that he was too.
Of the men that had been on the boat with them, only her prisoner was moving about. He began doing something in the pilot-house that caused the boat to slow in the river’s current, so that the barge was suddenly coming upon them most swiftly. Beyond the barge, Gerard saw a huge, billowing plume of black smoke rising up into the air. He started to ask what it was, but the barge was coming at them so fast now that his train of thought was forced into preparing himself for the coming impact.
Just before the collision would’ve taken place, a handful frightened men, under Flick’s watchful eye, came down off of the crates, and bodily guided the river boat around the barge. Once they were beside the barge, Gerard saw the source of the dark smoke. A push-boat, or the flaming hulk of one, was drifting behind them in the current. A few men, and a lot of debris, were in the water around it. Some of them were cursing and splashing. Another was screaming horribly, and a few others were floating lifelessly in the flow. A rather large splash sounded, and the man who had been screaming, disappeared under the water. A large, rippling wake could be seen trailing towards the marshy side of the river channel. The others in the water suddenly grew very still.
It became obvious to Gerard what they were doing. They had pirated the barge. They were going to push it with the boat they were in. Gerard learned that the man Shaella had spared was a Water-Mage. Berda had told of them in one of her tales.
Water-Magi came from Highwander, and used some sort of elemental magic, Gerard remembered. They could make a boat move up or down a river, or in the case of Berda’s tale, across a stormy sea. Shaella confirmed this when Gerard asked her about it. She explained that the magi could only work their power on ships and boats fitted with transoms lined with Wardstone. It was the stone that held the power, she explained. The ability to command the stuff was a specialized skill though. One could only legitimately learn the art at the Port of Weir, in the Kingdom of Highwander. Willa the Witch Queen’s Castle, Shaella told him, was built on the only place where the magical rock could be found.
“It’s what gives her so much power,” Shaella said, with a teasing look in her eyes. “That, and the fact that she eats her soldiers after they die.”
“Don’t fill his head with old wives’ tales,” Cole said, with a grin. “He did too well today to get less than the truth out of us from here on out.”
Gerard felt a bit of pride after hearing this, but no one told him anything more. As the day wore on, things settled. The four men, who had been taken forcibly from the barge, had been told that they would eventually be paid and released if they served and obeyed. Mutiny, of course, meant death, so they really had no choice. The Water-Mage, however, knew better than to believe the lie. He knew he was as good as dead. He co-operated more for the sake of the four bargemen’s lives, than for his own. He had thanked Shaella sincerely after she had healed his gashed side, but she was no fool either. She caught him eyeing his possibilities, and placed Greyber in the pilot-house to watch over him, just in case he got any ideas.
Later in the afternoon things got tense. Ahead of them, the river split into a “Y,” and down either branch, there were people and buildings. To the right, was the Westland flow, and to the left, the channel that eased along the Kingdom of Dakahn. Several docks reached out into the river from each side, and hundreds of people could see them pass. Cole and Flick both pulled up their hoods and stayed where the barge men could see them. Shaella joined Greyber and the Water-Mage in the pilot-house. If any of them were going to attempt something foolish, this would be the best opportunity for it.
No one did.
They took the Westland branch of the river. Gerard saw that what spread out between the two channels wasn’t really land. It was shallow, marshy muck. Grass grew up out of it, thick, lush, and as tall as a man, giving the terrain the illusion of being solid underneath. The illusion was shattered though, when the rolling wake of the boat, made the grass dance and waver with the flow. The expanse of grassy marsh seemed to spread out endlessly to the south and east. The solid shoreline to the right of the boat though, was Westland.
Bright, green rolling hills, dotted here and there with rocky formations and small clusters of hardwood trees, filled the spaces between crop fields and grazing pastures. A hard-packed road ran alongside the river, boasting what might be considered a small town every now and then. Wooden docks stretched out to the edge of the main river channel’s flow. Some were empty, others held small fishing crafts tied to them. A few fishing boats could be seen out in the swamp grass. They looked out of place, like they had been washed up in a field.
Soon, they passed a stone building with armed soldiers standing on its crenellated parapet.
“An outpost of the Westland Marsh Patrol,” Shaella told
him, as she studied the place intently.
Less than a mile later, they passed what could’ve been called a city. There, the docks and piers were large and sturdy enough to load and unload barges. To the left of them, the marsh was only growing thicker and deeper, as it filled the space between the boat and the horizon. Gerard could see places where the ground humped up out of the muck, and large droopy trees had taken root. Around each of these swamp islands, a plethora of birds swooped and swirled about like a cloud. Some of the birds were as big as men, with wingspans easily twenty feet across. Flick called them “dactyls.”
At dusk, after a long stretch, where nothing but farmland could be seen along the Westland bank, Shaella ordered them to turn directly into the marsh. Gerard could hear and feel the abundance of life out and around them as the boat was swallowed up. Like a horse-drawn wagon charging through a cornfield, they moved through the tall swamp grass. Several times, he saw patches of the grass shake as the surface of the water was churned by some huge thing underneath that was darting away from their passage. Chirps, humming buzzes, and distant splashes, along with bellowing croaks, and the occasional groan, filled the night. Eventually, they lit torches, which only served to make the swampy marsh seem that much vaster. A cloud of biting gnats formed around Gerard’s head, and a not so distant splash, which was so big, its ripples made the whole boat rock back and forth, caused a tremor of unease to run through him.
He decided to sit down and close his eyes for a while. He fell asleep against the pilot-house.
He woke once, when it felt like the boat had stopped moving. He heard foreign voices that had an almost animalistic hissing quality to them, but he was too tired to pull himself out of his slumber to investigate. After a while, Shaella joined him. She was silent, as she took his side and let her head rest on his shoulder. His sleep was deep and sound then.
The Sword and the Dragon Page 25